Leiden’s Academiegebouw, c. 1516, overlooking the Rapenburg canal. Access to the Hortus botanicus is on the right.
As a young Dutch historian from Leiden University, Sonja is the story’s main protagonist and focalizer. She is a typical Dutch character—sensible, honest and committed—and the guest-curator for a VOC exhibition at the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam. Several crucial chapters are set in the Netherlands where, despite her well-travelled unbringing, she finds herself challenged by new beliefs and ideas. The clairaudient messages from the sangoma, combined with Sonja’s own rigorous enquiries, offer the reader some unique insights into Europe’s political leadership since antiquity.
Erasmus of Rotterdam
(1466-1536)
William of Orange
(1533-1584)
Hugo Grotius
(1583-1645)
Baruch Spinoza
(1632-1677)
Queen Wilhelmina
(1880-1962)
Click here to read a Dutch book review, or travel on to Portugal with Sonja Haas.
The intertwined adventures of the novel’s main characters may be less convincing or intriguing, I agree, but that’s because they merely exist to unravel Almeida’s enigmatic murder. If I could tell the story myself, I’d have readers know what a cynical and selfish travel companion Jason really was! Nicolaas is simply too kind to reveal more of him in the book.
Perhaps I shied from Jason’s character because his insistent testing of so-called spiritual ‘truths’ is a bit autobiographical? He reflects my struggle to reconcile science and religion, knowledge and faith, rationalism and mysticism. As Almeida did too.